Crystal's Song

by Millie Gray

  “But will Mammy no be worried when she gets hame and I’m no in my ain bed?”

  “No. I’ll get one of the bairns to run up with a note and put it in the letterbox.”

  Archie nodded. “Thanks, Dinah. You’re a real swell. I just dinnae feel I’d want to be all on my ain the noo.”

  Once Archie had taken his leave and Etta had departed with Bill, Tess looked at her mother. “Mam,” she said, biting on her lip, “I’m going to have a baby.”

  “A baby!” exclaimed Dinah. “Oh, great. I just love babies, so I do. And your grannies will be cock-a-hoop. When’s it due?”

  “June next year. And Rupert says the added bonus is that – what with him getting me …” Tess laughed and patted her stomach, “well, we won’t have to give you any other present for your birthday!”

  Dinah shook her head before enquiring, rather coolly, “So do I take it the baby was planned? It wasn’t just a happy mistake?”

  “Mum, you know Rupert doesn’t make mistakes. He plans everything …”

  Looking away from her daughter, Dinah muttered under her breath, “I have the awful feeling he worked it out, right down to the exact time required and …” She giggled to herself, realising it was pretty crude to say such a thing but she did wonder what bonus payment he had awarded himself for reaching his target.

  Before Dinah could let her speculations run on, Johnny came in looking rather guilty. “You in some sort of trouble, Johnny?”

  “No really, Mammy. It’s just … well … know how I’ve been writing to that German lassie I met while I was doing my National Service?”

  Dinah put up her hand. “We’ve been here before, Johnny. I know the war’s been over for seven years now but your Granny Mary … och, Johnny, you know she’s never got over Dod being killed …”

  Johnny interrupted her. “But Granny’s getting old and if Frieda was staying here she wouldn’t ever need to meet her.”

  Sipping from a glass of water she’d just drawn from the tap, Tess gulped. “Stay here? Are you mad, Johnny? Our Dad never talks about what he suffered at the hands of the Germans while he was a prisoner but he did suffer. We know he did. And simply to be civil to a German would be hard enough, but to have one under his very own roof!”

  “Mammy, I’ve invited her because I want to marry her …”

  “Marry her?” exploded Dinah. “Oh my Gawd,” she exclaimed, running her hand through her hair. “Tell me, Tess. Am I going crazy or something?”

  “No, Mammy, you aren’t, but our Johnny is. Look, Johnny, just leave the lassie in Germany just now. In another five years or so attitudes might – well they just might have changed.”

  “Cannae do that. She’s arriving at the Waverley at ten o’clock!” Johnny now turned to Tess. “She’s always wanted to spend Hogmanay in Edinburgh.” Turning back to Dinah he pleaded, “Mammy! Please say she can stay in the back room.”

  “Suppose she could, but thankfully your Uncle Archie’s in residence there and there’s just no way your father will put him out of that bed tonight so that a Fraulein can get in.”

  The long silence that now filled the room allowed Dinah’s thoughts to run riot until they were suddenly interrupted, this time by Crystal bursting in. “Have you heard? Heard the awful news?” was all a tearful Crystal could sob out.

  “What dreadful news is that?” Dinah asked wearily.

  “Just that Sam Campbell is being sent to the Korean front line after the New Year!”

  Sitting down and tugging at her hair again, Dinah wondered why Crystal’s puppy-love for Sam Campbell hadn’t died – but then, hadn’t her Crystal’s infatuation with Sam been so ardent that it had left her barking mad!

  The doorbell ringing at two in the morning awoke the whole household. Joe was first to arrive at the outside door but was unable to reach the top lock. Tam arrived just as Joe was dragging a chair over to stand on. “Look, son,” Tam said, as another urgent peal of the bell rang through the house, “you get back to bed and let me deal with this.” Opening the door, Tam was surprised to find Patsy and Mary, both of whom seemed in quite a state. “What’s the panic?” he asked.

  “Panic?” screeched Mary, pushing roughly past him. “I arrive home from our Mystery Drive to Carlisle …”

  Having now appeared on the scene, Dinah remarked, “But I thought your Mystery Tours always went to North Berwick.”

  “In the summer they do. But in December we go somewhere we can do our Christmas shopping. But forget that! What’s much more important is, where’s my Archie? And why is there a lassie sleeping in his bed who can only say, ‘Nine, nine,’ when you ask her anything?”

  Dinah shook her head and looked to Tam for help. “Told you, didn’t I, that you should’ve got on to that Dag Hammarskjöld and offered him the chance to get in some experience.” She turned to her mother-in-law. “That’s him that’s hoping to be the next United Nations Peace Keeper!”

  Everybody looked from one to the other before Tam broke the silence. “Mam, Archie’s in bed here. He had to get three teeth out and he didn’t cope well with the anaesthetic so we decided he was better kept here with us.”

  Butting in, Dinah explained to Mary: “As to Frieda being in your house – she should have really been at my mother’s.” Dinah now looked accusingly at Patsy. “But you changed your door lock last week and forgot to give me a duplicate key so I couldn’t get in. What else could I do? Frieda couldn’t stay here,” she went on hesitantly, “seeing she’s German and Tam here isn’t …” she paused again, searching for the right words, “… isn’t all that well-disposed to them yet.”

  “Oh look, don’t blame me for this fiasco. It makes no difference to me now, Dinah. The war was a long time ago. Anybody’s welcome in my home now,” Tam declared.

  “So Frieda can come and stay in this house?”

  “Aye, she’s welcome … even if she is,” he gulped, “a Teutonic kraut!”

  “Did you hear that, Johnny? Your Dad says Frieda can stay here from tomorrow and if you want to marry her you can.”

  “Here, just a minute,” protested Tom, but as he looked around all the expectant faces in the room he knew he’d lost the argument. And as for Frieda, she’d have quite a battle on her hands getting Tam really to accept her!

  22

  Tom, as he was now called by everybody (with the exception of his mother and brother Archie, to whom he would always be Tam) was thoughtful as he sat in his swivel chair looking out into the snow-covered garden. New Year had come and gone but he hadn’t really got into the spirit of looking forward to the new year and what it would bring.

  “Well,” he argued with himself, “there’s not much going for it so far. Johnny’ll be coming home from Germany tonight with his bride and they’ll be starting married life in Johnny’s room. Suppose if we’d stayed put in Restalrig Circus and I hadn’t decided on going up in the world and buying this six-roomed house, Johnny wouldn’t have got Dinah to agree to them staying until they’d saved up the deposit for a flat.” Tom jingled the money in his pocket, thinking, “I for one couldn’t help them out. Not with Dinah having to give up work because her cough had come back – and with a vengeance.”

  Tom’s thoughts went back again to Johnny marrying in Germany with none of the family being there. Why he couldn’t have got married here, he simply didn’t know. Hadn’t he tried to make the lassie feel, if not exactly welcome, at least tolerated?

  “Oh, yes,” he reminded himself, “not once did I say a word about Hitler and the German people starting the war – a war I’ve had cause to remember bitterly.” He wriggled painfully in his chair, recalling the nightmares he still endured. Although less frequently now, he could still waken in the still of the night with terror seizing him as he imagined the cold steel of a bayoneted rifle thrusting into his back while the command, “Raus! Raus!” urged him to keep on running. Or he would relive those enforced marches where he could do nothing but trudge stoically onward. He sighed, thinking how everyon
e in the family said he was too cool and distant with Frieda. He huffed, thinking that even Joe had said to him, “Why don’t you like her, Dad? Is it because she’s not like us?” Tom gave another sigh and a slow smile crossed his face when he considered how hard it had been for him to accept Joe as “one of us”. Now the wee lad had unconsciously wormed his way into his heart, so much so that he never noticed he was any different from his other children. All he knew was that Joe had brought brightness and colour into his life. He vividly remembered that evening eighteen months ago when he first realised what Joe meant to him. A constant ringing of the bell had him urgently open the door, where he found a dishevelled Dougie Small, Joe’s best pal, who spluttered, “You’ve got to come quick, Mr Glass. Joe’s injured. I even think he’s deid!” Tom had raced out of the door, leaving it ajar, and followed Dougie up to the railway dyke where Dougie and he scrambled over the wall and down on to the railway line. The lungs of the wee lad were now searing and he had to stop and bend down to catch his breath.

  Helping Dougie up again, Tom demanded, “Where’s my Joe?” Dougie pointed along the line and over to the west where the boys regularly played football. Leaving Dougie to follow at his own pace, Tom sprinted towards the playing field and was relieved to find Joe sitting upright, his head up against another boy’s chest.

  “It wasnae my fault. Honest, Mister, it wisnae. Joe was gonnae score and I tackled him and he went up in the air and came doon funny,” protested Bill, another pal of Joe’s.

  Tom went over and lifted Joe into his arms. “I think my arm’s broken in ten places and so’s my leg,” mumbled a tearful Joe. “And I ken I’m no supposed to … what’s the word, Dad?”

  “Trespass,” said Tom. “But that’s by the bye. Let’s be getting you to hospital.”

  Joe started to tremble. “But will they no send for the polis who’ll lock me up in a school for bad laddies?”

  “Hardly,” said Tom, unable to hide his smile. “But seeing that I’m going to have to carry you all the way, what’s the easiest way out of this place?”

  Joe’s pals all pointed towards the railway track that ran level and was obviously the best way for Tom to carry his son.

  Once they reached Leith Hospital Casualty Department, Tom was greeted by a young doctor whom he knew.

  “Good evening, Mr Glass.” Tom nodded as he laid Joe down on the examination trolley. “Whose wee lad is this? One of your pupils?” enquired the doctor.

  Tom shook his head. “No. Joe here is my son.”

  The doctor briefly scrutinised both Tom and Joe before saying, “Really!”

  Tom was incensed. Why was it people always noticed colour? He never did these days.

  Tom knew by the incessant coughing that Dinah was about to join him. “Thought you were going to try and have a lie-in, love?”

  The barking started again and it was some time before Dinah could answer. “Naw. It just goes on and on. I’ll need to see the quack again.”

  “How about we go down this afternoon?”

  “Hmmm. Could do. He did get it sorted the last time but all he could ever say was, ‘Give up the ciggies, Dinah, before they give you up!”’

  Tom didn’t comment. He’d been a smoker too until he became a prisoner of war. Then quickly he realised his captors wouldn’t supply his basic needs in food and clothing, never mind handing out cigarettes. After the war, he’d decided that saving up the deposit for this elegant house (as he saw it) was more important than wasting money on a quick draw, so he’d never taken up the habit again. As for Dinah, he did try last year to get her to give up and she did indeed manage, accompanied by her fellow-addict, Etta. However, their success had been short-lived. The pair of them, along with Archie, went to the Palace Picture Houses to see Vincent Price in The House of Wax. While watching the lassie being toppled into the hot, bubbling, molten wax, Archie became so frightened that he dropped his packet of five Woodbines. Dinah and Etta then scrambled to pick them up and Archie naturally insisted they each have one. They’d readily agreed because Vincent’s Wax House was so scary it was possibly going to put them all off their sleep. So surely it was better to have a puff to calm their nerves!

  Before Tom and Dinah could set off for the doctor’s, the doorbell rang with a characteristic clamour which indicated that Tess had arrived with her baby: the baby that was now only six months old because she’d had decided to show her father that she was now in charge by arriving three weeks late.

  “Can’t stand people who don’t deliver on the date they agreed,” Rupert had announced when she was one week late – and by the time she was three weeks late he had accused the doctors of getting their calculations wrong. He’d even gone to the length of interviewing the consultant obstetrician and demanding that he be furnished with the formula that was used when the estimated time of birth was arrived at! While this request was being courteously rejected, Tess had gone into labour and Davina arrived. Of course she was called after Dinah but never was Davina’s name to be shortened to Dinah. And small as she was, she was the one person who could make Rupert forget all his calculations and figures as he was too busy jumping through the hoops.

  The instant Dinah relieved Tess of the baby, Davina began to bill and coo to her grandmother. “My, but she sure is getting on. Just look at those big blue eyes – and that smile could melt the iceberg that sunk the Titanic, so it could.”

  “Talking of melting, Mum, d’you know who I’ve just seen walking arm-in-arm along the front of the Links?”

  Dinah shook her head and Tom looked nonplussed.

  “Crystal and Bing!”

  “Great,” exclaimed Dinah. “Now if we could just get her up the aisle before wonder-boy Sam gets back from Korea … ” Dinah couldn’t go on as she was overtaken by a further bout of coughing.

  “Look, Tess, just before you came in, I’d got your Mammy to agree to go to the doctor’s – d’you mind if we nip out and do that? We won’t be long.”

  “Not be long?” spluttered Dinah. “We’ll be gone at least an hour. Why they don’t have appointments I simply don’t know.” She stopped to draw in some air. “You mark my words! People will get fed up just going into a waiting room and counting the numbers in front of them.” She coughed again. “You know, last week your Granny Mary was there for three hours because she kept losing count until she was the only one left in the waiting room! Now where was I? Oh aye, you mark my words – appointments will come.” To please her, both Tess and Tom nodded in agreement. “Anyway, instead of you staying here, let’s take wee Davina here down to see Dr Hannah. He’ll be tickled pink to see her.”

  Once Dr Hannah had admired Davina and everybody else had left his surgery, he was then able to examine Dinah. He sighed as he removed his stethoscope from his ears and laid it on his desk. “Don’t like the sound of your lungs.” He paused. “Look, you go up to Spittal Street – you know, just behind the Castle – and get an X-ray done. In the meantime, I’ll talk to a colleague of mine at the Eastern General Thoracic Unit and get him to see you.” He paused again. “No need to ask you if you’re back smoking again. I can smell it.”

  Dinah bowed her head in embarrassment. “I suppose I let you down.”

  “Not me. Yourself. Nicotine is a killer, Dinah. And you have just so much to live for!”

  23

  Until last week, Dinah had moaned at the length of time it took for the powers that be in the Eastern General to send her an appointment to meet the god-like figure, better known as the consultant. Dr Hannah had, after all, continually stressed to them that, in his opinion, she should be seen as a matter of urgency. Now here she was on her way at last, only a few days after the first of April, her favourite time for giving birth. Instinctively, she put her hand up and grabbed the hedge to steady herself as a bout of coughing racked her.

  Then she breathed in deeply and was continuing to make her way slowly up Restalrig Road when she heard a voice call out her name from across the road. It was her mother-in-law, Mary
Glass, who had obviously been waiting for her to pass that way so that she could open the window and let the whole neighbourhood know from her shouts that Dinah was going off to the hospital and so needed all the luck Mary could wish her. Waving back to let Mary know she’d heard, Dinah walked on towards the YMCA where she saw her mother already waiting for her.

  Dinah had tried hard to persuade her not to come, but as Patsy herself explained, in her usual clumsy manner, she had given birth to her and if anyone was about to tell her that Dinah was going to make an early exit she would definitely be there to tell them otherwise!

  They decided it would be best to enter the hospital by the back door, so they journeyed along Restalrig Crescent, crossed over Findlay Avenue and walked on to the posh side of the Crescent, which had Gumley Davidson tin hut houses on one side of the street and smart four-in-a-block corporation housing on the other.

  Patsy remarked, “You know, they say folk are just desperate to get one of these tin huts. Wouldn’t thank you for one, I wouldn’t.”

  “Don’t know anybody in they huts. And even if they are running with condensation, boiling in the summer and freezing in the winter, the folk inside all seem to be well-heeled.”

  “Aye, but they’re snobs. I mean to say, just look how well you and Tom have done and you don’t send your children to fee-paying schools.”

  Dinah was getting breathless by now and was grateful that they’d reached Findlay Gardens and the cul-de-sac that led into the allotments from where the hospital back door could be seen. “Have you ever thought, Mammy … that we don’t send our bairns … to posh schools because we cannae afford it?”

  “Look, you’re fair puffing. Come on now. Haud on to me. I’ll do the talking for once and you just listen.”